An X-ray medical diagnostic method such as mammography or general body imaging is a low-dose procedure that creates one or more images of a part of a patient such as a breast or any other organ thereof, which is to be examined, e.g. for detection of early stages of cancer.
The mammography diagnostic procedure generally includes recording two X-ray projection images of each of the patient's breasts, one from above and one from the side. A physician or radiologist then reviews the images of the breast, i.e., mammograms, to identify any breast cancer. If the physician or radiologist finds anything that could indicate cancer the patient is recalled for a follow-up examination, during which further two-dimensional X-ray images, three-dimensional X-ray images, ultrasonic images, and/or MR images of the patient's breast are recorded, and/or cell tissues are removed for examination.
In mammography screening women of an age between about 40 and 75 years are examined by recording X-ray projection images of patients breasts each or every second year. Such procedure results in a large number of X-ray images, where only about 0.5% of the patients at each screening procedure have cancer. However, as much as about 3-15% of the patients are recalled for further examinations. Such follow-up examinations are time consuming and costly, and only a few of those will result in a cancer diagnosis.